


Forsythe

by Davis (Ihasa)



Series: The Haunted City [2]
Category: Original Work, The Haunted City
Genre: Angelic Possession, Attempted Suicide, Death, Gore, Horror, Non-binary protagonist, Short Story, Suicide, Zombie, like a lot of death, they're a mortician, trans protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihasa/pseuds/Davis
Summary: Forsythe Boggs is a mortician who works just outside of The Haunted City. As such, they have a particular way of handling the specific challenges of their line of work.
Series: The Haunted City [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984283
Kudos: 1





	1. Case One

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for gore, guns, a little light misgendering, and depictions of the embalming process.

It was a dark and stormy night. A hot and windy summer storm had blown in earlier, and it showed no signs of letting up until morning. Rain fell in heavy gray sheets, cutting visibility down to a few yards outside of the little brick building on the edge of the city. Lightning hit the tops of the buildings in the distant skyline. The wind blew the powerlines around, spinning the streetlights hanging from them into whirling orbs of orange light. 

Forsythe checked their watch and shuffled awkwardly against the wall. They coughed politely at the storm, and at the headlights approaching in the distance, and wished that one would hurry up and the other would slow down. Neither party complied, to Forsythe's dismay. They held their umbrella a little closer to their shoulder, and waited. In time a plain white van pulled up, its tinted windows doubly dark in the storm. A man in a yellow raincoat jumped out, guarding a clipboard under his bulk. Forsythe recognized him as Terrance, one of their assistants. This was appropriate, as Forsythe had sent this same Terrance to recover their guests from the hospital some forty minutes prior, so all things considered the night was going smoothly thus far.

Terrance looked Forsythe up and down as he approached, a drawn and almost exasperated look on his pale, unshaven face. Forsythe smiled thinnly. Everything Forsythe did they did thinnly. They were built like a spider and hunched like a vulture, doing things thinnly came naturally to them. They saw the old, familiar questions rising in Terrance's eyes, the noting of Forsythe's gentlemanly mode of dress, their thin and masculine hips, contrasted the suggestion of breasts under their yellow tartan waistcoat. They saw the equation compute and come up with a series of question marks after the figurative equals sign. Terrance was new.

“Uh, Mister Boggs,” he said, nodding. Forsythe smiled at the acceptable inaccuracy, their crowsfeet crinkling and their sharp brown cheekbones rising. Terrance was so very, very  _ new _ . He would learn. Or perhaps he would not.

“What have we tonight, Terrance?” Forsythe was aware that they sounded like that fellow from The Monster Mash, but to Terrance's credit he did not chuckle. Perhaps he was worth keeping after all.

“It's just like she said on the phone, Mister Boggs.” Terrance handed Forsythe the clipboard and walked to the back of the van to open the doors. “Two little ol' ladies. One dead of natural causes, no autopsy, other one bit to death.”

Forsythe juggled the clipboard and their umbrella, leafing through the sheets to confirm what Terrance and the coroner had said. Death by massive bloodloss. It was not Forsythe's first choice as far as how they wanted to die. It was not even in their top ten.

“Oh my.”

Terrance brought both gurneys down out of the van, unfolding them with a clatter. The two white plastic bags shimmered in the hard rain. The metal gurneys gleamed a bloody orange under the streetlight. Forsythe could almost smell the blood and viscera, the fluids draining from the wounds and holes in the abdomen. 

“You need me, Mister Boggs?”

Forsythe looked back up at their assistant, their long, sad face impassive. They blinked slowly, like an owl.

“No, Terrance. I shouldn't think so.”

“Then I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, I suppose you shall.”

Terrance went off across the parking lot, pulling his hood tighter around his head. He found his car somewhere off in the rain, and with a growl and a cough the old Dodge drove off into the night. Forsythe wheeled the gurneys into the building, through the door marked succinctly as 'Boggs, Mortician. No Solicitors, if you Please.'

* * *

The preparation room was sterile in every sense, and looked somewhat like a dentist's office. Forsythe had had it painted a soft shade of green to offset the harshness of the brushed steel cabinets and tables. They had considered detailing the molding with small flowers, or perhaps depictions of adorable woodland creatures, but could not shake the feeling that this would have been in poor taste, somehow. Forsythe wheeled their two guests into the room and washed up. They decided before they were through with the first rinse that they would see to the more damaged lady first. It was the least they could do for her, after all she had been through. They pushed the second gurney against the wall gently, and then turned on the radio. They searched around for some age appropriate music to help their guests to relax before going to dress themself.

A dead body did not bleed, or excrete in any way, but the chemicals Forsythe would be using were harsh, and the fluids they would drain were rife with bacteria, and as such the seal of their garments was important. They put on a respirator and a plastic mask, and little cloth booties. They had a belt hanging in the same closet, which they put on. The weight was companionable as they put on their smock and tied it behind their neck. Last were gloves, and the task was complete.

They unzipped the first lady from her bodybag and addressed her by the name on the clipboard.

“Mrs. King.” She had been washed at the hospital, her body autopsied. Her skin was pale gray, bloodless. She had been in her sixties, and, they thought, perhaps quite beautiful in her time. Forsythe clucked their tongue, surveying the damage. She had been butchered, and bloodily so. The long suture down her abdomen was uneven, as there had not been enough flesh to complete her after the autopsy. Something had taken violent, tearing bites out of every available inch of flesh. Her face was half destroyed, her lips and one breast torn off. The flesh of her left arm had been stripped off. She had been gutted, and Forsythe could only imagine how it must have looked when they found her. They thought that 'massive bloodloss' did not begin to cover what had caused this woman's demise. They shook their head, pityingly. It was such a shame.

“You poor dear. Let's clean you up.” They said. They were lucky enough to have a machine to lift their guests onto the table, and used it to lay poor Mrs. King out on a set of blocks and a headrest. Then, as not to be disrespectful, they went and unzipped Mrs. King's unfortunate housemate, Mrs. Vickers.

Forsythe stopped, the zipper still in their hand. They checked the coroner's report, confirmed what they had read earlier, and what Terrance had said. They reached out and touched her face. She was, and there was no other word for it, she looked quite  _ healthy _ for a dead woman. Her skin was not drawn, or even pale. There was no sign of her blood pooling at the back of her neck, or anywhere for that matter. Her limbs were loose, as though rigor had not set in at all. She was  _ pink _ . 

Forsythe swallowed, a strange and uncomfortable thought that not even the cheerful radio could push back rising to the surface of their mind. Most cities with any sort of ghost industry claimed the same, but this was the truth: Forsythe lived in the most haunted city in America. They knew it. Everyone knew it. Certain papers of ill repute made their livelihoods on their fair city. They had the highest concentration of supernatural activity in the nation, perhaps the world. There was an antique mall on the other side of town that no one but the tourists dared enter, office buildings with suspiciously high turnover rates and bloody stairwells. Cats laid eggs on the nearby farms. Ghostly librarians shelved books by a system that was no longer accepted. The Scouts did not hold Jamborees here, or for miles from here, for reasons even they could not voice.

But Forsythe was a mortician, and a professional. They sighed. They even laughed a little.

“Goodness me, Mrs. Vickers,” they said. “Goodness me.” They turned away, leaving her on the gurney against the wall. They laughed again. There was a paranoia that could follow working with the dead, a silly, childish way of thinking. They thought themself above it. They looked back over their shoulder at Mrs. Vickers. She stayed perfectly still, glowing with vitality she did not possess.

“Goodness me,” they said, once more for good measure.

They went to the counter and started to mix the embalming fluid, just to distract themself, and when they were ready they turned back to Mrs. King and started giving her another quick wash. They spoke to her, commenting on the music and the room. They told her their idea about small woodland creatures on the walls, but made sure to say that they thought it was in poor taste. They did not look at Mrs. Vickers. They told Mrs. King a little bit about themself, but tried not to dominate the conversation too much. They rubbed her limbs, massaging the rigor out of them, coaxing her stiff arms to bend into more comfortable positions. They did not look at Mrs. Vickers, resting like a sleeping child behind them. They covered Mrs. King's bloodied torso with a sheet, for modesty's sake, and set out their tools on a towel. They added water to the embalming machine, finishing the mixing process. They did not look at Mrs. Vickers, even when their ears lied and said they heard the soft rustling of something moving inside a body bag. 

“Calm down now,” they whispered. Their thoughts were closing in, a dark haze of apprehension clouding over them. They looked at poor Mrs. King's ruined face, at the bite marks on her flesh. The perfect, square bites, like you might see on an apple you were eating. The indents shaped like human teeth. Hands shaking now, they rubbed cream into the remaining flesh of Mrs. King's face and hands, softening her skin. They looked at the clock, at their tools, at everything except Mrs. Vickers. That ghostly, impossible sound rustled again, the silken, airy sound of plastic wafting in a breeze that did not exist. Forsythe took a deep breath, tasted blood and chemicals in the air.

Something went  _ thwap _ behind them as something hit the floor heavily. Something shuffled in the body bag. Forsythe turned around. They did not breathe. Their right arm swept behind them. They looked.

It was rising to its feet, pushing off the body bag like an old garment. Its eyes were open, its jaw slack, its shoulders loose. It hung like a rag, but its feet were planted, its gaze focused on Forsythe. The light they had seen in it before was bright, no longer just the glow of vitality but a blinding luminescence pouring from its face, a pale pink light that burst from every orifice in the thing's. It looked at them through strands of perfect, shiny hair, and it pulled its soft cheeks into a terrible smile before lurching for them, hands outstretched to drag them to the floor like it had Mrs. King.

Forsythe's hand broke quarantine as it slipped under their smock, brushed their gloves and all they carried across their waistcoat, their belt. They drew out the companionable weight and raised it, drawing in one deep, calm breath as their left thumb flicked over the safeties and they raised the black, snub-nosed Walther P22 to level with their shoulders. They squeezed the trigger and let it out, four short sharp exhalations through their nose, four shots. The first to the thing's chest, the second in a thin white kneecap. A fraction of a second to notice its shape flickering, its hair a stringy mess, the blood on its mouth and chest and hands, the light inside it strobing, and they put the third and fourth rounds in the same kneecap and its shin. 

As it fell Forsythe was replacing the gun on their hip. As it hit the floor they were drawing the second tool from the slot beside the holster. The first time it bounced it howled, a deep bass thrum that shivered the tools on the counter. The second time it bounced Forsythe was on top of it, driving it to the floor with one hand on its neck. 

It flailed and fought against them as though it had not felt the four .22 caliber rounds. Forsythe pinned its arm with their knee and drew back their arm, cupping the snapping jaw in their other hand to keep it still. The hunting knife flashed under the florescent lights, a silver bolt that fell like a stone into the thing's vulnerable eye, blotting out the strange pink light. There was a wet sound, and a spatter of fluid, and then a damp  _ chock _ as they broke through the bone. The thing jerked, thrummed like a harp again, but Forsythe twirled the knife inside its head like a whisk, and did so until it stopped moving completely.

They sat like that for a few seconds, perhaps longer. The clock on the wall ticked. The tools on the towel shone. Their knee dug into the old woman's arm. Forsythe sighed, and withdrew the knife slowly to prevent spattering.

“I  _ am _ sorry, Mrs. Vickers.” They dropped the knife, thick with gray matter and blood, into their sanitizer. The gun would have to wait beside the sink, the safeties on again. They bent down and lifted the old woman's body onto the gurney, apologizing again. The light gone, she was bloodied and twisted, her mouth a mess of gore that had once been her housemate. Forsythe shook their head, and promised to have her cleaned up just as soon as they could. They covered her with another sheet. She might have died of shame, could she see herself like that.

“And I'm sorry that you had to see that, Mrs. King.” They turned back to their other guest. She lay as she had been, waiting for her treatment. Forsythe changed their gloves, pausing in the middle to turn up the radio a hair. They could all use a little cheering up, they thought. 

“It's this city,” they said, shaking their head and clucking their tongue. “ _ Such _ a shame.”

And then, taking up their scalpel, they set to work.


	2. Case Two, Nostalgia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for suicide, attempted suicide, guns, a brief mention of familial pushback at transitioning, and gore.

Andrew Smalls lay on the embalming table, naked and pale. He had been a strong young man. Healthy, athletic. Beloved, they were sure. Handsome, they supposed. He had been seventeen, still sporting acne on his face and chest. Still not quite able to grow a mustache, if the thin wisps of hair on his upper lip were any indication.

He had slashed his wrists in the dark hours of the night before, while the snow fell and the world was quiet. Someone had found him, taken him to the hospital, but it had been too late. Andrew Smalls had died before the sun rose, and some hours later he had been brought to the the little brick building on the edge of the city. The one with the sign that said 'Boggs, Mortician. No Solicitors, if you Please.' next to the door.

“You poor boy,” moaned the mortician, sighing deeply through their respirator. The mortician stood beside the table, gazing sadly down at the young man with the same sad, weary expression they always wore. Not a she, not a he, Forsythe Boggs stood tall and thin, a handsome waistcoat and slacks safe under their pale green smock. Their dark, kinky hair was pulled tightly back into a small puff on the back of their head. They clucked their tongue. They snapped their rubber gloves absently against their wrists. “What must have driven you to this?”

They shook their head. They sighed again. They fiddled with the radio until they found some music the young man might have liked. It would not have been their first choice, as far as listening, but they really weren't the important one here.

“Such a shame,” Forsythe said, and then they smiled. “But fear not, young man. We'll see you sorted out.”

They washed the body thoroughly, talking gently and companionably to their guest as they did so. They massaged his limbs and joints back into looseness. After a long and complex internal debate, they apologized to him, and then shaved the sparse hair on his upper lip and chin, promising him that it was not because it looked  _ bad _ . They took care of him, as they took care of all their guests, but somehow, this poor, unfortunate boy felt different. Forsythe felt a deep well of emotion, gazing down at this child. Not sorrow, not really, though most of Forsythe's emotions were easily interpreted as some flavor of sorrow or malaise. This was something else, something that dug a deep trench in their gut. They recalled something Terrance had said he'd heard: that whoever had cared for Mister Smalls in his final hours had found the boy with a smile on his face, that he had smiled until the end. Terrance had said he had heard it described as though the boy were in ecstasy. 

Terrance was Forsythe's assistant, once new and now a comfortable addition to the little building on the edge of the city. There had been some rocks in the river, a troubling habit Terrance had had of referring to Forsythe as 'Mister' Boggs, but all that was in the past. Forsythe liked Terrance. He was a good assistant. He took to the task with a sense of respect, not perhaps to the extent that Forsythe themself did, but a healthy amount nonetheless. They had spent many a night sitting up with Terrance while they waited for the embalming process to finish, just sitting and talking about their lives, their aspirations, and at least once, Terrance's long lost glory days. He had been a talented football player, though Forsythe did not have the mind to recall what position he had played. They remembered Terrance had said he had an arm that would have taken him to the professional level, but then he had trailed off. There was something that had stopped him, ended what he described as a meteoric rise. Terrance would not say what, but Forsythe suspected it had something to do with the long pink scar on Terrance's bald white head. Terrance would currently be sitting in the crematorium, waiting while a machine sifted through the sands of a kind old man called Stanley Rodriguez…

Forsythe shivered suddenly, as though someone had trailed a finger up their spine. They blinked. Their eyes felt dry. They had been staring at the curved needle in their hand, at the bright silver flashes the florescent lights made along its length. Forsythe chuckled, and shook their head. How unlike them to be distracted like that! How silly, they thought, how truly silly. They chuckled again. They sutured shut Mister Small's gaping wrists and made the necessary incisions into his major veins and arteries. They fed the tube into his artery and switched on the machine on the counter beside them. It hummed softly as the fluid, part formaldehyde and part water, flowed into him. The other tube sloshed faintly as the fluid, mostly blood, flowed out of him and down the drain. Everything going smoothly, they washed their gloved hands and fiddled with the shining tools on the little table, watched the bright silver flashes along their lengths, like bright white feathers, or... or…

Forsythe Boggs had a sister, a younger sister called Marisa, whom they loved intensely. They spoke once a week, always on Sunday, always between the hours of two and four in the afternoon. Sometimes Forsythe would forget to have dinner while they talked, or sometimes they would make themself a little something, and chew quietly. Their sister was a proud woman, a kind woman, a good woman to know, though at times she would become caught up in a strange sort of nostalgia herself and recall times before Forsythe had decided they were a 'they'. Forsythe would hold their tongue from reminding her that a lot of things had changed since then, for instance that the Boggs children had had Boggs  _ parents _ back then. Before the aunt, and the agency, and the paperwork. To the Boggs family credit, though, there had not been much trouble at Forsythe's transition. There had really been more pushback over the name, they remembered. Oh, how the family had whined, how they had carried on. How they had said Forsythe's birth name had been such a  _ beautiful _ name, such a strong and handsome name, and was 'Forsythe' really a name at all?

They were touching his wrist with two long, thin fingers. Mister Small's wrist. His slashed and ruined wrist, now sewn expertly shut. They were suddenly aware of their face, tight and drawn, teeth clenched. Their eyes felt wet. They stung. A soft and silky sound, like a fluttering of wings, echoed under their facemask, distant and unreal and yet very, very close. They did not flinch, they did not register the sound, as though they had not heard it. They felt the boy's wrist. There were two long, straight gashes, almost down to the bone. No hesitation wounds, no shallow cuts. They stared down at him. The machine hummed. Their head felt light. They felt... they weren't sure  _ how _ they felt. They blinked the moisture from their eyes.

They had had a girlfriend at one point. At several points, to be honest, but this one... she had been... They had messed it up, they supposed. Said the wrong thing at the wrong time, or she hadn't approved of their extensive gun collection, or something. They didn't quite recall, just now. They couldn't quite remember her face, or her touch, or what she wore. They couldn't... They…

They blinked again. Their vision was swimming. That soft sound came again, from right behind them, like a moth fluttering against their hair.

Did Terrance have someone? He did, they recalled, though they couldn't remember anything about the partner now, not really. He must have talked about them. Forsythe must be able to remember something…

The thought slipped away. There were tears running down their face now. Their hands were slack, arms hanging at their sides. They felt the weight of the gun on their belt, the one they always wore under their smock, the one for those times a corpse got a little antsy here in the Most Haunted City in America. It was just through their smock. They felt it there, surely they should... they should…

Their hand flailed out in a listless arc, landed on the machine. The machine stopped humming, though they barely knew why. Tears hit the inside of their facemask. They took it off and dropped it on the floor, fingers weak and limp.

There were tears, but Forsythe wasn't sad. Not really. 

Their face was tight, pulled into a pained and stiff smile, but they weren't happy. Not really.

They didn't feel anything. Not really. 

They wondered if that should bother them.

* * *

Forsythe stumbled into the hallway. Their shoes dragged against the floor, scraped on the linolium. Their head was up, their eyes focused on some distant place, but their body was slack and limp. They lurched down the hall, breathing ragged breaths. They untied their smock and let it drop to the floor. The sound of the falling cloth, the sound of their heart pounding in their ears. The fluttering of many wings. 

They had opened the practice years ago, when they were younger and stronger but so much more naïve-

“Boggs? 'Zat you?”

Terrance's rough, deep voice was far away, calling curiously, distractedly. Forsythe heard a magazine rustle.

“Terrance,” they murmured through their gritted teeth. “The... the hall closet...”

Their voice failed them, slipped out of them. Stopped. They couldn't find a reason to draw enough breath to speak, to open their mouth and say anything more. They simply didn't have the strength. And really, why should they? They dragged on down the hallway, pulling off the cloth booties as they stumbled. They dropped them, one at a time. They drifted to the floor without sound.

Past a door. 

Up the stairs. 

Past the viewing rooms, the reception area, the room where the previous day mourners had gathered. Empty now, silent. Forsythe's shoes skidded across the thin, green carpet.

Another door. There was no urgency in their gait. No reason to hurry. They had a destination, but there was no need for them to worry about when they would get there. They would get there soon. They wouldn't stop. It was all going to be alright. It was all going to be over.

The wind blew across their hair and face. It was cold in the tears on their cheeks, frigid and biting, but they didn't notice. Not really. The door to the roof slammed shut behind them, metal crashing into metal. They didn't jump at the sound. It was too soft, muffled under the beating of so many wings.

The sun would be rising soon. The light here was gray and lavender, the sky a slowly oozing mass of pale clouds. Miles down the road Forsythe could see the lights and buildings of the city. They recalled how long they had lived here, how many years and cars and apartments they had spent here. Their life rushed by like a river, and idly they passed their hands through its waters, grasping at memories and moments before they slipped through their fingers. They didn't hang on. 

They didn't have the strength.

The weight of their belt pulled against them, threatened to pull them to the ground. They didn't look as they grasped the grip of the pistol with weak hands. Limp-wristed they pulled it free. Wings, beating behind them, out of sight. A soft, gentle voice. Distant trumpets.

The gun hit the cement roof with a thud. They walked forward. The hunting knife fell next. Soles scraped against the dirty roof. The buckle of their gun belt clinked as they undid its clasp. They were still holding it when they reached the waist-high wall around the edge of the roof. They held it as they flattened their hands on the wall, let it hang from their fingertips as they hoisted themself up. Their shoes slipped, but they caught themself.

Forsythe looked out over the lot behind the mortuary. The wind blew at them, pushed their thin, dark shape. They thought they heard seagulls, somewhere, over the flapping of wings. They watched the belt fall, like a ribbon in the pale light of dawn, from their limp hands. They were still smiling. They were still crying. But they didn't feel anything. Not really.

A thousand miles away there was a crashing sound, a door thrown open. They stared forward, blinded by tears, smiling through the salt and the wind. The wind grabbed at them, pulled their clothes, their hair. They felt it bite straight through to their skin. They stared at the ground some thirty feet beneath them. At the thin cement wall they were standing on. They went limp. It took no effort at all.

Air passed through their hair. Their arms, slack and limp, began to rise. They heard the wind rushing past them. And then:

“ _ Boggswhattayadoin'?! _ ” There was a clatter as something hard hit the cement roof, the squeaking, stomping sound of shoes. Forsythe's ribs rammed right down into a pair of large, strong arms. Terrance fell back onto the roof, toppling over under the crashing weight of Forsythe and the force of his own desperate pull. Skin and bones hit muscle and fat as they hit the roof together, bouncing once and rolling apart. Forsythe pushed themself up on their stiff, shaking hands, eyes bleary and dripping tears, glasses slipping off their nose, mouth finally breaking free of its smile. The haze shook off, shattered, tore away in shreds. Their mind went abruptly, horribly clear, and Forsythe heard themself scream. Their eyes darted across the roof, at the air behind them, at the faint shimmer they almost couldn't see. The shadows that had been there in the shine on the knives, the fluttering thing that had waited, just behind them, in the room with that poor, dead boy downstairs. Through their tears they could see it, waiting in the bright light of dawn in their teardrops, in the nostalgia they had felt, in the memories of their sister and Terrance. They could see it, a shifting nothing in the air, like a wisp of saran wrap, or smoke, nearly impossible to spot and easily lost.

“Terrance!” They cried, their voice strangled and hard. They held out their hand, not daring to take their eyes off, and Terrance obediently pushed what he had taken from the hall closet into Forsythe's hand. It was heavy, dark, and comfortable. Forsythe raised the shotgun like it was a third arm.

Eyes stinging, too scared to blink, a thousand thoughts whirling in their head like a hurricane, both eyes open, fierce, stinging, sight down the barrel, aim for center mass, inhale-

The shot fired with an explosive sound. There was almost no recoil, the ammunition was too light. But at this range the shot struck true, and a spray of rock salt hit the wisp in its center, chunks of salt ripping through feathers and skin, trailing white smoke and down. The creature wailed like the brass section of a middle school orchestra-

Forsythe had never been in a school band-

_ No. _ They jumped up, not looking at it now, threw themselves past it and rolled. The shotgun lay behind them, empty, useless, discarded. The Walther P22 they had dropped earlier, however, was full.

They landed on their back, legs spread, knees bent, shoulders squared, head up. The wavering shimmer was solid now, all wings and feathers and eyes, so many eyes. Rolling, mad, bloody in places, if the silver fluid hissing and dripping from its wounds  _ was _ blood. It turned those eyes on Forsythe, on Terrance, on the city far away. It trumpeted, and it turned. It began to open its wings, layer after layer peeling away like layers of bark on an ancient tree.

Forsythe knew, as one knows things in the static of terror, that if it opened its wings there would be an eye there, in its center. A great eye, focused, clear. It would see them, and if it did, they would die. They would turn the gun on themself, on Terrance. Or they would jump, as they had tried to. Its wings rustled. Forsythe thought they heard a choir, growing closer, building into a roar.

They raised the gun and fired, again and again, always aiming for the center, for the eye they knew would be there. Sprays of feathers and silver blood flew through the air, burst into light, and disappeared. Forsythe breathed quickly, exhaled on each squeeze of the trigger. The muzzle flash was bright, lit up the dark spaces where the bursting feathers did not, turned the roof into a bright spray of white fireworks. Four shots and it started to lose height, its many wings ragged and broken, unable to hold up its weight. Five shots and Forsythe stopped firing and fought to their feet, nearly falling in their scramble. One more shot as they walked towards the fallen wad of feathers and blood, lowered the gun, and stamped down with one clean, polished shoe.

Fluid spattered from under their shoe again and again. Their eyes were wide open. They didn't know what they were feeling, if it was anger or panic, they just felt it storming in their chest, occupying the empty space this... thing had made inside them. Filling the hollow it had carved. They saw the face of that boy downstairs in their head, in flashes between stomps, in the morning light shining in the thing's sparkling, steaming blood. The creature was trumpeting, the choir shrieking, but it couldn't get up. Forsythe was making a strangled noise between their clenched teeth. Their eyes burned.

They didn't know how long the monster had been silent when Terrance pulled them away, how long the only sound on the roof had been their own voice, and metal clinking under their shoe. Forsythe was breathing ragged breaths, almost sobs. Their throat was raw. Terrance held onto their arms, above the elbow, until they relaxed enough straighten up and stepped away. Forsythe adjusted their waistcoat. They swallowed.

On the cement where the creature had been, next to the tiny crater where the final bullet had lodged, was a something small and silver. They knelt down and picked it up, held it up to the light.

“Jesus, Boggs. What the hell-ass  _ was _ that?” Breathed Terrance.

Forsythe stared at the little flash of silver. It was so small. So bent and broken after their assault. They held it by the chain, let the locket dangle in front of their eyes. The hinge was smashed. It hung open. They gazed at the picture inside for a moment, and smiled their slow, sad smile.

“Nothing,” they said softly. “It was nothing. Not really.” They tossed the locket to Terrance and walked to the edge of the roof, shaking their head. They checked the Walther, wiped the sweat off their palms, and called back:

“Terrance. Pull.”

In the cool, purple light of dawn, Terrance smiled a tiny, somewhat perplexed smile and relaxed his shoulders. He pulled back, spun the locket over his head, and with the arm that would have taken him all the way to the national level, he threw the tiny flash of silver into the sunrise. Forsythe followed the bright flutter over their head, raised the gun and fired once more towards the horizon. A bright star of silver caught the first red lights of dawn, the shrapnel glittering in the air until it blew away to nothing.

* * *

They went back downstairs, and Terrance stayed leaned up against the counter in the embalming room while Forsythe finished up on Mister Smalls. They talked about everything, about their lives and their days and about nothing at at all. Forsythe asked about Terrance's partner, and learned all they had forgotten amid the teasing they deserved. And much, much later, Forsythe's sister would call, between the hours of two and four in the afternoon, and Forsythe would forget to have dinner while they talked.


End file.
